page_title: Joseph Ruau
section_title: Minister of Agriculture
hierarchical_section_title: Joseph Ruau / Life / Minister of Agriculture
caption_attribution_description: English: French Minister of Agriculture Joseph Ruau from Les Hommes de Jour #118
context_page_description: Joseph Ruau was a French lawyer and radical politician. He was deputy for Haute-Garonne from 1897 to 1914, and was Minister of Agriculture from 24 February 1905 to 2 November 1910. He was known for promoting agricultural cooperatives
context_section_description: Ruau was appointed Minister of Agriculture on 24 February 1905 in the cabinet of Maurice Rouvier and retained this office in the cabinets of Ferdinand Sarrien, Georges Clemenceau and Aristide Briand until 2 November 1910. In 1906 he presented a law that organized long-term financing of agricultural cooperatives by the Crédit agricole banks. The cooperatives were defined as societies of people rather than of capital based on the principle of "one man, one vote" in which profits were shared. The state offered guarantees to the banks. Ruau issued a decree to regulate the organization and operation of horse racing. He proposed measures to assist farm laborers who had suffered work accidents and southern wine growers ruined by the fall in the price of wine that followed the losses due to phylloxera.
  On 5 July 1908 Ruau spoke at the second national conference on mutual credit and agricultural cooperation at Blois. He pointed out that the state was promoting a rural, property-owning democracy. This was true, but he gave an exaggerated view of the benefits of recent legislation in promoting agricultural syndicates and mutual aid societies. He overstated the influence of his government in promoting rural cooperation, which had been developing for over a century but still had far to go. He supported the creation in 1910 of a radical federation of capitalist farmers of the Parisian Basin in competition to the very conservative Union Centrale des Syndicats des Agriculteurs de France.
caption: 1910 caricature by Aristide Delannoy
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